Nothing Beats an Old, Crappy Car

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Nothing Beats an Old, Crappy Car

Sam Smith

I just bought a shitbox.

Actually, shitbox is a bit harsh. Crapcan might be better. It's kinder. But so many euphemisms apply. Rattletrap. Heap. Beater.

Whatever you call it, it's a 1971 BMW 2500 sedan. I drove it home last week. It cost $2,800 and had been on Craigslist for months. That's a long time, but then the previous owner lives high in the Sierras, more than an hour from anywhere, and the car’s interior appears to have been lived in by a pack of wolverines. And let's be honest: There aren't many people who want a 44-year-old luxury car with bad paint, rusty doors, a torn headliner, no radio (or carpeting, or air conditioning, or fifth gear), a leaky clutch master cylinder, a trunk full of filthy and near-valueless spare parts, and zero historic or investment value.

I was thrilled.

Sam Smith

I write about cars for a living. The job is nothing if not surreal. Last year, I lapped Indianapolis Motor Speedway in a Porsche 962C that won the 24 Hours of Le Mans. I spent the better part of a day last fall drifting six-figure exotics on a closed-off airport runway for a photographer. I have driven every new car on the American market and more supercars than I care to remember. I've been lucky enough to meet many of my heroes, the racers and artists and engineers who spend their lives pursuing speed, beauty, and genius. As with any job, there are bad days, but the best of them provide a glimpse of how humanity works and thinks and dreams.

And at the end of those magical days, I come home to my piles of crap.

Of the seven cars I own, five move under their own power. Just one was built in the last decade, and only two—a 1965 Ford Mustang fastback and a 1968 Alexis Formula Ford race car—could be said to have any real value. Lest you become envious, my entire collection, a term I use loosely, is worth less than a new pickup. I’ve always been this way. I’m 34 years old, and I have owned almost 40 cars. (I'd also note that I can't stop, but my wife might read this, so let's just say I can. Any time I want.)

Car obsession isn't rare, nor is owning several vehicles. But an alarming number of car writers share my affliction. Some express it by carefully curating a collection of classics; others choose a shotgun approach with, shall we say, less traditional machinery. This has little to do with income and everything to do with perspective and a kind of disease. A writer I know in New York has a literal warehouse full of cheap old British sports cars. My friend Jason Cammisa, an editor for Road & Track, has a lifelong obsession with humble Volkswagens. Aaron Robinson of Car and Driver went to absurd lengths to obtain a three-cylinder Suzuki Cappuccino, and he's rebuilt twoLamborghini Espadas. Lamborghinis make no sense to begin with, but Espadas, which offer the running costs of a Countach and the value of a BMW, make even less sense. Aaron bought one, restored it, sold it, and missed it. So he bought another one and almost immediately took it apart.

There are two things to note here. First, I am jealous of Aaron. Not for the Lambos, but for the nonsensical projects*.* I can’t explain it, but I have always wanted to tear a V-12 to pieces, and Aaron has deconstructed two. And second, our heads work alike.

"Modern cars have to be appliances," he once told me. "A little too good at their jobs—heavy, comfortable, they do everything well. Even the fun ones are missing something." This is why he owns a cranky old Lamborghini few people want, and why he habitually seeks out 20-year-old Mitsubishi Monteros on Craigslist.

And it is why, a month ago, I spent two days driving a 1970s German hantavirus home to Seattle.

Sam Smith

I know how this looks: Privileged people drive all the new cars, get used to glory, and decide everything sucks. Boo-hoo. But it comes from a different place, I swear. Part of it is because newer cars are expensive, and variety is spice. If you're of modest means and willing to sacrifice, you can have five neat old cars for the price of a single new one. My friend and walking automotive sideshow Bill Caswell once called this process "experience as much as possible and then you die."

But as far as I can tell, this affliction is rooted in what we've lost. Call it simplicity or purity, maybe even character, born not of wear or time, but of freedom of design. And an obsession with the fundamental quirks that give a car personality. Things like floor-hinged pedals, gated shifters, or doors whose latches feel deeply mechanical, like the cocking of a gun. And if you drive a lot of new cars, you realize that stuff is growing rarer by the minute.

It is a byproduct of progress. On paper, a new BMW M3 is superior to any before it. The modern car accelerates harder, stops quicker, and is quieter and more comfortable than an M3 built in the 1990s. Any engineer will point to it as a less compromised product. But compromise is character. The older car is simpler and smaller. It was built to less aggressive crash standards, so it has thinner pillars and weighs less. You can see out of it easily, and the lack of weight helps the car give you feedback, so it’s more fun to drive at legal speed. The new one feels like a city bus by comparison.

Modern can be better, but it isn’t necessarily.

This isn’t a unique opinion, and these aren’t new arguments. Twenty years ago, people were looking to the vehicles of decades prior and bemoaning the increase in weight and complexity. In the late 1800s, the first automobiles were viewed as atrocities, far less civilized and romantic than horses. Rose-tinting the past while moving forward is human nature.

But looking back still has value. Many analysts, for example, now believe that the recent boom in classic-car values is due to the arc of new-vehicle development. Take the current Porsche 911 GT3: a fantastic car, but complex by the standards of even ten years ago. The electrically assisted power steering is distant. The car’s newly elongated wheelbase improves stability and ride, but at the expense of a cozy cabin and compact footprint. It’s also available only with an automatic transmission—a piece of equipment that takes an engaging job out of the driver’s hands.

Previous GT3s were deeply involving to drive and only available with manuals. When the new car was announced, older examples—even relatively recent models—saw a noticeable increase in value.

What have we gained? Everyone knows that restrictive legislation killed the grossly unsafe or heavily polluting car. That is inarguably good. As is the glut of durable, crashable and recyclable vehicles filling showrooms. We are living in something of a golden age of automobiles—more performance and relative fuel economy than ever before. And while new cars still break, statistically, they're more reliable and efficient than at any point in history. The inevitable march toward perfection has given us direct-injected, turbocharged engines with fantastic performance and wonderful fuel economy, dual-clutch transmissions that deliver shifts in the blink of an eye, and electric cars virtually free of excuses.

Sam Smith

Part of this is simply time. Computer-controlled engines have been common for over 30 years. Crash safety has been a science for longer than NASA’s Apollo program existed. Even the simple rubber tire is over a century old. Those are just three pieces of a complex machine, but cumulatively speaking, each has received more development hours than the Manhattan Project. Given similar time and engineering attention, anything would evolve to be good.

But if humanity is an assemblage of flaws, we're slowly engineering the human out of the automobile. And the more new cars I drive, the more I find myself drawn to the “bad” old ones.

The 2500’s shift lever goes directly into the four-speed transmission—no linkage, just a rod moving another rod moving a gear stack. It clicks into place with a notchy, mechanical flip, like the rewind lever on an old film camera. The manual steering box and small tires keep the wheel dancing and talkative at modest speed. The paint is faded and shrunken, but the ash trays and door furniture are plated metal, not plastic. The whole car seems to have been built with an eye toward multiple lives, with a simple, honest functionality at the heart of every piece.

When the 2500 was new, it was the range-topping equivalent of a modern BMW 7-series. Those cars dwarf it in traffic. They are soporific at anything below 100 mph. Eighty mph in the 2500 is roughly 4,000 rpm in fourth gear. The engine, a 2.8-liter straight six, is neither original to the car or quiet. It howls, but it’s a virtual turbine on the Interstate—glassy, revvy, unmistakably German. You stay awake and feel alive. You are dwarfed by Honda Accords. When I got the car home after 800 miles of road trip, I was sore, smelly, and oddly rejuvenated.

I like nice cars and pretty things, of course. I can sit on the lawn at Pebble Beach or stroll through Cars and Coffee as thrilled as anyone else. Nor am I a Luddite. I love the BMW, but I wouldn't strap my kids into it for a daily commute. My wife has a 2005 Honda CR-V for that. It’s safe. It’s reliable. You put the key in and it goes. In 150,000 miles, it's needed little more than gas, tires, and a water pump. This is a wonderful thing.

But that 2500. Most people would see it as used-up junk. I see potential. Yes, the front seats are from an Acura. The trunk seal lets exhaust into the cabin. The gas pedal gives the carburetors just half throttle. But the suspension has been rebuilt. The gearbox is solid. The brakes are healthy. The body is straight as a Nevada highway.

I can make a difference here. I can make this car better, keep it alive without losing the patina and earned funkiness of age. And then we can get out and go places.

I own seven cars. I have wealthy friends who literally can't count their vehicles without a spreadsheet, so by some standards, seven is nothing.